The present invention relates generally to storing collected data points from any computer pointing device, such as a mouse or a digitizer tablet, in a specific format, and more specifically, the comparison of two continuous lines generated by a mouse or a digitizer tablet.
The process of visually comparing two continuous lines for equality is well-established. For example, a person is asked to write a continuous line on one sheet of paper and then is asked to write the same continuous line on a second sheet of paper. By visually comparing the two continuous lines, it can be concluded either the two lines are similar or not similar. The visual comparison is time consuming and can result in comparison errors due to human factors, such as vision problems. The two continuous lines can be electronically generated and compared using an automated computer based verification system. An automated computer based verification system requires a computer mouse or a digitizer tablet to collect data points.
A computer mouse and a digitizer tablet are known for data input applications. Typically, a mouse or a digitizer tablet is used for capturing primarily spatial and sequential information. When a mouse is moved or something is written on a digitizer tablet, the output is a parametric representation of the movement; that is, the writing is represented as a series of x, y coordinate values as a function of time. This feature may be applied to other gathering functions.
The accuracy of an automated computer based verification system relies on the mathematical algorithms and methods of comparing two continuous lines. Today, there are many companies who have developed their own automated computer based verification system, but these systems make mistakes in recognizing the differences between two continuous lines.
What is needed is a method for collecting the parametric representation of the movement of the computer mouse or digitizer tablet at certain time intervals and using the collected parametric representation to generate certain differentiating factors to provide a highly reliable technique for comparing two continuous lines.